Family that lost two children helps others savor theirs

It was a tough decision for the Szott family to make.

Having just lost their second child to cancer, Kathryn, David and their son Brian wanted to do something to remember Andrew and Abby. But any memorial the Eagan family set up for other sick children meant they would, again, have to be exposed to the smell of hospitals, interacting with doctors, and talking about platelets.

"But we realized that with the grief and sadness we were dealing with," David said, "that we were either going to succumb to the grief and become stagnant, or we were going to grow from it."

So in July 2006, four months after Abby died, the Andrew and Abby Szott Foundation was incorporated. It gives $25,000 grants to families with sick children so at least one parent can stay home with their child and not have to worry about the grocery bill.

Last week, the foundation gave out its second $25,000 "Gift of Time" award to Dawn and Nathan Carlson of Janesville, Iowa.

Their 2-year-old son Elijah has a rare, aggressive form of infant cancer and is being treated by the University of Minnesota Children's Hospital.

"This financial gift, it's just the relief of a very small part of the heartache they're feeling," Kathryn said.

Andrew died in 1990, when he was 6, two years after Abby was born.

Abby was "a total delight," her parents say. She was always positive, loved to try new things, and had a radiant smile. As she grew, she became an avid gymnast.

"We always thought that she was God's gift to us after Andrew died," David said.

When she started feeling pain at the age of 15, she didn't think anything of it at first. But after rounds and rounds of tests, she was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. After once being declared cancer-free, she relapsed and died in March 2006, three months before she was supposed to graduate from Eagan High School.

She had completed enough credits to graduate when she died, so Brian accepted her diploma for her.

Kathryn teaches at Como Park Elementary in St. Paul, where she has a resource classroom for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. David works at Cerenity Health Care Systems in St. Paul as the director of maintenance and engineering.

Brian, 27, is studying Radiography at St. Paul's College of St. Catherine, "because of Abby."

As the family deals with the challenges of life after Andrew and Abby, such as dealing with the grief that they expect to never go away, and deciding how to answer when someone asks how many children they have, they use the foundation as an outlet to honor their children.

"While we don't say it explicitly in the application, most of the children whose families receive the gifts are probably going to die," David said. "At that point, there's nothing more important to the families than being able to spend time with their children."